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April 13, 2000

Assembly, Council okay plan to extend time for clinical medical faculty to earn tenure

Faculty Assembly and Senate Council have endorsed a proposal to extend the time it takes clinical faculty in the School of Medicine to earn tenure.

Under the plan, clinical faculty would have 10 years, instead of the traditional seven years, to demonstrate their scholarly and teaching abilities.

Given the growing and unpredictable hospital workloads of clinical faculty, a seven-year probationary period for them is no longer feasible, medical school administrators say.

As it is, a growing number of clinical faculty have been temporarily removed from the tenure stream to give them a fair amount of time to obtain tenure — granting them, in effect, a 10-year probationary period.

Pitt's Board of Trustees is expected to consider the tenure policy change at the trustees' June meeting. Board approval is required because the change would alter Pitt bylaws.

Senate Council, at its April 10 meeting, endorsed the proposal without debate. But at Faculty Assembly on April 4, three professors expressed reservations.

"This, potentially, sets a precedent that might not be contained to clinical faculty in the medical school," education school professor Mark Ginsburg said.

What's to stop Pitt administrators in the future from declaring that some faculty need, say, 20 years to qualify for tenure? Ginsburg asked. Extending the probationary period means extending the time that faculty lack the rights and protections provided by tenure, he said.

School of Dental Medicine faculty member John Baker said that, based on the tenure abuses he's seen in his school, he worried that the new policy might not be applied fairly to all qualified faculty.

Walter Goldburg, of the physics and astronomy department, moved to table endorsing the tenure policy change, to give the Assembly more time to ponder it.

But an overwhelming majority of Assembly members rejected Goldburg's motion and voted to endorse the proposal.

— Bruce Steele


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